Research in Focus: Turning Up the Temperature on Biofilms

Tell us a little about your background. How and why did you want to explore a career in science?

I was about 11 or 12 years old when on a whim I picked up a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History in Time. Prior to that I really didn’t have much interest in science or mathematics or anything like that. I was more interested in art and music. But my whole life I would say changed after reading that book. I became sort of obsessed with knowing more and more about physics in particular. It completely captured my imagination. It seemed so mysterious and exotic. How the heck did they possibly figure out these things? It seemed so strange to me. So, I really wanted to understand and get down to the nitty gritty as it were. I threw myself into learning as much as I could, even at that age. I started teaching myself calculus and other sorts of mathematics. That passion remained through my childhood and fortunately till today. I went on to complete degrees in Physics, first at Boston University and then at King’s College London. Eventually I wound my way up here to do my PhD at the University of Edinburgh, where I studied the biophysics of protein self-assembly.

What is your area of research and what industry does this research or technology relate to? (e.g., health, biofouling)

My research primarily focusses on the biofilm extracellular matrix. This is the sticky substance that glues together the bacteria in a biofilm community. A lot of my research focusses on the common soil bacteria Bacillus subtilis. This is a real workhorse in many industries, producing enzymes and lots of other materials. And not to mention that it’s being used as a probiotic that helps to promote crop health and other things. So, my research really crosses boundaries when it comes to industrial interest.

How does your work link to biofilms and/or AMR? 

The extracellular matrix of biofilms is sort of like a net trapping and sequestering antibiotics from reaching the cells within. This can increase bacterial resilience and tolerance against antimicrobial treatments. Moreover, biofilms in their matrix can induce the presence of antimicrobial gradients which actually has been shown to help accelerate the onset of antimicrobial resistance. I’m interested more generally in how bacteria can modify their extracellular matrix in response to the environment in which they live. The hope is that in doing so we can perhaps find conditions or strategies which can weaken the ability of the biofilm community to put up defences against these antimicrobial treatments, which will help their efficacy and improve patient outcomes.

Are there any highlights/discoveries from your work you can tell us about? 

A lot of my recent work has been looking at how environmental conditions can alter the makeup of the extracellular matrix of biofilms. We found that when you start to turn up the temperature on Bacillus subtilis biofilms, they start to do something very interesting. They transform their extracellular matrix, and their properties completely and utterly change. So, at lower temperatures, they produce a rather stiff matrix, and the resulting biofilms are these beautifully wrinkly, also beautifully hydrophobic structured biofilms. However, when you reach temperatures of around 50°C they completely change. The biofilm is unrecognisable to the ones at 30°C. They are runny and spread all over the surface of the plates that we grow them on. They resemble something that you would blow onto a tissue when you have a bad cold. They are sort of snotty and unpleasant looking.

Through this work we’ve discovered what the biomolecules are that are responsible for these different types of matrices. Now we are going to try and understand how this is controlled at a genetic level. Moreover, we want to really understand why they do this in the first place. Does it give them an advantage to retain more moisture in hot environments? Does it allow them to escape these conditions more efficiently? Generally, we want to understand what the advantages are for being able to make this marked switch in the matrix in response to the environment. These are the kind of questions we would like to understand because it could inform us about how we might be able to engineer biofilms in the future to do these sorts of things when we want them to.

Has NBIC supported you with any of your projects or in your career? If so, please explain how. 

NBIC has been instrumental in advancing my career. I became an NBIC Interdisciplinary Research Fellow, which not only helped to fund my research and my work, but it also provided me with a really important professional network, connecting me with other early career researchers throughout the UK. This has resulted in lots of new collaborations and publications that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to make without the backing and support of NBIC.

What is one thing we can do as scientists to positively impact equality, diversity and inclusion?

A great part of the job is mentoring students and young scientists, undergrads, PhD students and even post docs. I think it’s extremely important to understand the impact we have on their lives as mentors, as supervisors and as colleagues. Science is fundamentally a collaborative endeavour and it’s a global project really. It’s bringing together people from diverse backgrounds and diverse ways of seeing life. I think we can set the bar on how we treat people across all these different diverse backgrounds with understanding and empathy. The hope is that by creating this sort of working culture in the sciences, when students go out into the world, whether it be in science, industry or any other employment endeavour, that they’re bringing the culture we create here, which can be very high pressure and competitive, and take these lessons out into the real world and propagate that into the future to hopefully create a better more inclusive world.

Find out more

If you are interested in learning more about this work and would like to connect with Ryan please contact NBIC at nbic@biofilms.ac.uk.

Ryan Morris, Interdisciplinary Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh